NWO-KNAW meeting Grip on Complexity

Supervision and governance in a complex society

Complexity theory can be fruitful in helping to improve public governance and supervision in general. For example to predict, and preferably manage, the effectiveness of their policies. But also to create self-regulation, or to influence the degree of manageability.

Moreover, Complexity research can throw fresh light on actual policy questions. Like building a framework for macro prudential policy, i.e. the policy to deal with the financial system as a whole.

Complexity science is of increasing importance to a wide variety of applications, like logistics, biology, finance and sociology. One of the connecting themes is the question of controllability versus self-organised or turbulent behavior. At the NWO-KNAW meeting Grip on Complexity at 17 December 2013, the focus was on the lessons to be learned from and the challenges of the complex systems approach in different fields.